Writer seeks 'Justice' in new play

Robert Lipkin became a playwright by accident. He was writing a book about a story he had heard years ago, but when he showed it to an editor, she started asking him a lot of questions.

“She asked if the bar was dark or bright, was it daylight or evening, was so and so in a dark dress,” Lipkin recalled. “I didn’t care about the details. I cared about the story and the ideas. And she pointed out that 80 percent of the novel is dialogue. She said, ‘You’re a playwright. Don’t write a book again.'”

Don Walker, Amanda Schlachter and Joseph Parra are featured in "Sweeter Than Justice." COURTESY PHOTO

So he turned that book into the play “Sweeter Than Justice,” which he has been developing for more than a decade leading up to Thursday’s world premiere at the Cook Theatre in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts.

Like the original book, it is inspired by a story he first heard when he was working as a lawyer many years ago. It involved a young woman who was attacked by a high-ranking member of Philadelphia’s organized crime organization. She somehow managed to put the attack out of her mind until many years later.

“I heard this story many years ago and I was obsessed with the story. I tried to envision what circumstances would have arisen to have her not be a victim,” Lipkin said.

Audiences first heard the story Theatre Odyssey put together a reading in 2006, which led to more revisions based on comments from the audience and other theater professionals.

Playwright Jack Gilhooley “gave me some wonderful advice when I had 18 characters. He said unless you’re last name is Shakespeare, you’re never going to get it produced.”

Now the play has a cast of six, led by Amanda Schlachter as a young law student named Geanina Palmieri who takes on Philadelphia mob boss Marco Donnatucci (played by Joseph Parra) because she’s the only person who can save his son from the electric chair. The play explores her life and how she handles the situation and the decisions she makes regarding the son, Joey, played by Raphael Petlock.

Tom Foley plays Geanina’s fiancee Michael Shapiro, a police detective and the nephew of her boss, David Goldstein (played by Don Walker) who manages the bar where she works. Brianna Larson plays two roles, including a neighborhood girl and bar patron, and Dan Higgs plays Father Mahoney and Joey’s attorney.

Carole Kleinberg, who has been working with Lipkin on revisions for part of the last year, is directing the production, which features an original score by Joe Micals, familiar to many as a pianist at Michael’s on East and composer of scores for some PBS documentaries, Lipkin said. Kleinberg also staged a reading in February at the Glenridge Performing Arts Center.

“We’ve lost about 15 or 18 pages of dialogue,” she said. “There was a lot that needed to be cleaned up, some residual from the novel that wasn’t appropriate for the stage, and we’ve been tweaking the voices of the characters to make them reflective of who these people were and what their relationships were. It’s been an evolution and the play is so much stronger for all that time."

Lipkin created Page to Stage Productions as a producing entity for this professional presentation, which features Actors’ Equity performers.

Playwright and producer are just the latest twists in Lipkin’s varied professional life. He was a lawyer, but was bored with the practice and later started an insurance company in New Jersey.

“I acted out every fantasy I had from the 1960s and ended up with a company that rewrote $140 million in premiums and more than one half of the staff had been deemed unemployable,” he said. He hired recovering alcoholics and people with physical disabilities. “People did things they’d never done in their lives.” As many as 18 vice presidents were African-American, which was unusual at the time.

But Lipkin has been writing since he was in high school, and had some short stories published. With the play, he liked the challenge of trying to write in a different form.

“I have an understanding of what would work and what wouldn’t work. I knew this would be painful and learning through the process. There are things I wished I had learned earlier as a producer, but I like the freedom of picking the director, picking the composer and having a say. I’m pretty hands on.”

After two weekends of performances, Lipkin said he’ll “see what happens next. I expect to win the Pulitzer Prize, but not this year.”

THEATER PREVIEW"SWEETER THAN JUSTICE" Runs May 12-22 at the Cook Theatre in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $28-$40, $15 for students and available through the Sarasota Ballet box office, 941-359-0099 or PageToStageProductions.com

THEATER PREVIEW"SWEETER THAN JUSTICE"
Runs May 12-22 at the Cook Theatre in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $28-$40, $15 for students and available through the Sarasota Ballet box office, 941-359-0099 or PageToStageProductions.com

Jay Handelman

Jay Handelman is the theater and television critic for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where he has worked since 1984. He also is President of the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time past chairman of the association's executive committee. He can be reached by email or call (941) 361-4931. Follow him at @jayhandelman on Twitter. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.

Last modified: May 6, 2016
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